Let me begin but stating that I know that despite the industry, the level of experience, and your actual job influence your salary massively.
However, with that stated, it's still logical to conclude that working in the right industry will give you better chances of landing pretty good salaries.
So, what software development industries have the highest salaries?
I hear, day trading algorithm engineers make quite a lot. Somebody also told me that game developers can make quite a bit, but in this case the workload does not reflect their salary.
Independent software contractors with a decent portfolio can pull six-figure incomes similar to quants in the financial industry. Generally you're working on C/C++/assembly language projects in the automative/aerospace/medical/resource industries. But the work is less steady. Sometimes you take a several month break in between jobs, which I find to be actually quite nice.
If you want to make a lot of money as a software developer, you first need to be really good, and then you need to go independent at some point.
Name:
Anonymous2011-07-15 14:12
Games developers generally make far less than other software engineers (outside start ups) of equivalent experience, and also work long hours with little security.
Defence and bioinformatics are where it's at if all you want is money.